A Sociological Research On Drama-In-Education For Children

This paper pays attention to art education in the perspective of sociology, focusing on issues of drama-in-education. The case study of children’s theater in the Q community in Nanjing shows the specific process of drama-in-education. The interactions among parents, teachers and children show the factors which influence the transformation of drama-in-education in a microcosmic path. This paper attempts to place this case in the context of social and cultural analysis.The phenomenon of a great cultural and social significance in the case is that, the children’s drama education is lack of policy and institutional support in the mainland, which leads to its nongovernmental features. Firstly, it’s promoted mainly by non-profit organizations or innovative organizations. Secondly, children’s drama education is not so much as a part of the education movement, it is a part of the community construction movement, and mainly spread and popularized in the community. Children’s drama education is reflected in the form of dramatic education, and related with empowerment through art, construction of local culture and the community building which aims at the construction of civil society. However, it doesn’t reach the original expectation under current social environment.Although children’s drama education is lack of policy and institutional support, education policy and system has never been absent in children’s drama education in the folk. In the theatre of invisible pedagogy, children’s play and work are still under the strong classification and structure. The interaction between teachers and students is restricted by the traditional classroom order. Out of the theatre, parents are obedient to the school system and norms. They have the utilitarian awareness and demand for drama education. Through art empowerment and local culture construction, drama education should have become the way to build common emotion and make people participate in public issues. But the parents care more about what the children can acquire in technical ability, and still have a standardized assessment and expectations for the results of the drama education. To some extent, they don’t care about the cultural significance of the civic construction in drama education. Current researches on children’s drama education also consider drama as a way of education, and put their emphasis on the problems of education policy and practice.When drama education’s characteristic of academic and cultural comes to daily life, it isn’t approved because of the absence of practicability. The change of drama-in-education not only comes from its own rule, but also comes from the pressure during the process of promotion. The education system exists as the "invisible hand", bringing the view of curriculum as fact, practical and functionalism "aesthetic", which affects the adaptation and transformation of drama-in-education, so that civic education is alienated to "pure education".